One interesting American thing (a technical term, meaning a moment or event, a text, a controversy, an idea, a figure, or whatevertheheckelse I think of) per day, from Ben Railton, a professor of American literature, culture, history, and, natch, Studies.

MyAmericanFuture

MyAmericanFuture

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

August 28, 2013: Fall Forward: Book Talks

[As part of my end of spring semester series, I blogged
about my upcoming fall
courses. But there are lots of other things going on this fall, so in this
week’s series I’ll highlight a handful of other upcoming events and some of
their meanings. Please share some of what your autumns will include!]

Three events that exemplify the multi-pronged approach I’m taking to
sharing my work.

In June’s book-release series, I
wrote about my newest public scholarly project; scheduling different kinds
of talks and presentations through which to share my book’s histories and stories,
ideas and arguments, with multiple audiences. I’ve got many presentations in
the works, and some are definitely scheduled; these three of the latter represent
three main types:

1)URI Diversity Week: On
Thursday October 3rd, I’ll be talking about my book as part of the
University of Rhode Island’s Diversity Week events (thanks to my colleague and
friend Nancy Caronia).
Sharing my work with college students, faculty, and communities is an essential
goal of mine, and the chance to do so alongside numerous other speakers working
on issues of American and world diversity is doubly exciting. I plan to focus
here on my
second and third chapters, and the broad and specific histories of American
diversity they include.

2)Plymouth Public Library: On
Monday November 18th, I’ll be reading from and talking about my book
as part of the Plymouth Public Library’s Wicked Local Read-A-Thon (thanks to
the library’s Jennifer
Harris). My central goal for these book talks, as for my public scholarship
more broadly, is to connect to audiences outside of academia, to interested
Americans and ongoing conversations; the chance to do so in historic American
places such as Plymouth is doubly exciting. I plan to focus here on my
first chapter, and the fundamentally inaccurate narratives of immigration
to which it responds.

3)Wilfrid Laurier University: In early January
2014, I’ll be speaking about my book to students and faculty in the North
American Studies Program at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada (thanks
to my NeMLA colleague Jennifer
Harris [not the Plymouth librarian!]). To be honest, the chance to share
some of my work and ideas with international communities and audiences feels
too good to be true; but I promise not to look the gift horse in the mouth, and
instead to talk to him or her about my book. I plan to focus here not so much
on what’s in the book as on connections of those histories and stories to Canadian
immigration, diversity, and Asian
Canadian communities.

I’ll keep you posted on these and all my other talks, and would love to
hear your thoughts on what makes for a particularly compelling or meaningful
presentation. Next autumn event tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Fall plans of yours you want to share?

PPS. Since I wrote this post, I've scheduled some more events, including two that I wanted to add to these examples since they're really ideal spaces for sharing this work: a talk at the San Francisco Public Library's Chinatown branch, on Saturday November 2nd; and a talk at New York City's Museum of the Chinese in America, as part of their MOCACitizens program, on Thursday September 19th. Both are free and open to the public, so if you're in those areas, please come out and say hi! For a complete list of my currently scheduled talks, see this new page!

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#NoConfederateSyllabus

In response to the controversy over HBO's proposed show Confederate, Matthew Teutsch and I have collaborated on #NoConfederateSyllabus, a Google Doc that you all can contribute to as well. Check out an intro here: